Atomic isotropic hyperfine properties for second row elements (Al-Cl).

Isotropic hyperfine properties have been obtained for the second row elements Al-Cl using a systematic composite approach consisting of a sequence of core/valence correlation consistent basis sets, up through aug-cc-pCV7Z, along with configuration interaction and coupled cluster methods. The best nonrelativistic final values for the atomic ground states (in MHz) are -1.80 27Al (2Po 1/2), -24.31 29Si (3P0), 63.70 31P (4So 3/2), 20.77 33S (3P2), and 35.42 35Cl (2Po 3/2). We find a large K shell contribution to the spin density at the nucleus that is almost canceled by the L and M shell contributions. The spin density in atomic units is approximately linear with respect to the atomic number.

Atomic isotropic hyperfine properties for first row elements (B-F) revisited.

Benchmark quality isotropic hyperfine properties have been obtained for first row elements (B-F) using a systematic composite approach consisting of a sequence of core/valence correlation consistent basis sets, up through aug-cc-pCV8Z, along with configuration interaction and coupled cluster theory methods. The best nonrelativistic final values (in MHz) are 10.64 (B), 20.22 (C), 10.59 (N), -31.74 (O), and 318.30 (F) and are in very good agreement with available experimental values for these difficult-to-describe properties. Agreement is especially close in the case of N, which has the most accurate experimental value. The spin densities derived from the best composite level of theory were found to closely follow a simple quadratic scaling with the atomic number, Z. Observed convergence rates in the 1-particle and n-particle expansions obtained here may be useful in judging likely accuracy that can be expected in studies of molecular systems.

Complete-active-space extended Koopmans theorem method.

The complete-active-space (CAS) extended Koopmans theorem (EKT) method is defined as a special case of the EKT in which the reference state is a CAS configuration interaction (CI) expansion and the electron removal operator acts only on the active orbitals. With these restrictions, the EKT is equivalent to the CI procedure involving all hole-state configurations derived from the active space of the reference wavefunction and has properties analogous to those of the original Koopmans theorem. The equivalence is used to demonstrate in a transparent manner that the first ionization energy predicted by the EKT is in general not exact, i.e., not equal to the difference between the full CI energies of the neutral and the ion, but can approach the full CI result with arbitrary precision even within a finite basis set. The findings also reconcile various statements about the EKT found in the literature.

The Right Answer for the Right Reason: My Personal Goal for Quantum Chemistry.

A brief history of quantum theory is given to illustrate the barriers to progress caused by preconceived ideas. The biases in my own thinking which I had to overcome to approach the right answer for the right reason are discussed. This is followed by a personal autobiography illustrating how I have led a life of serendipity with no real sense of purpose. Chance events have shaped my life. The algorithms for which I am best known are briefly discussed. Then highlights from the many applications of theory to excited states, bonding in ice, spin properties and magnetism, (e,2e) shake-up spectra, and organic reactions are mentioned. This wide range of applications is mostly due to accidental collaboration with colleagues who sought my help. My real interest was in developing methods which could address these problems.

A theoretical study of the adiabatic and vertical ionization potentials of water.

Theoretical predictions of the three lowest adiabatic and vertical ionization potentials of water were obtained from the Feller-Peterson-Dixon approach. This approach combines multiple levels of coupled cluster theory with basis sets as large as aug-cc-pV8Z in some cases and various corrections up to and including full configuration interaction theory. While agreement with experiment for the adiabatic ionization potential of the lowest energy 2B1 state was excellent, differences for other states were much larger, sometimes exceeding 10 kcal/mol (0.43 eV). Errors of this magnitude are inconsistent with previous benchmark work on 52 adiabatic ionization potentials, where a root mean square of 0.20 kcal/mol (0.009 eV) was found. Difficulties in direct comparisons between theory and experiment for vertical ionization potentials are discussed. With regard to the differences found for the 2A1/2Πu and 2B2 adiabatic ionization potentials, a reinterpretation of the experimental spectrum appears justified.

Nature of ground and electronic excited states of higher acenes.

Higher acenes have drawn much attention as promising organic semiconductors with versatile electronic properties. However, the nature of their ground state and electronic excited states is still not fully clear. Their unusual chemical reactivity and instability are the main obstacles for experimental studies, and the potentially prominent diradical character, which might require a multireference description in such large systems, hinders theoretical investigations. Here, we provide a detailed answer with the particle-particle random-phase approximation calculation. The (1)Ag ground states of acenes up to decacene are on the closed-shell side of the diradical continuum, whereas the ground state of undecacene and dodecacene tilts more to the open-shell side with a growing polyradical character. The ground state of all acenes has covalent nature with respect to both short and long axes. The lowest triplet state (3)B2u is always above the singlet ground state even though the energy gap could be vanishingly small in the polyacene limit. The bright singlet excited state (1)B2u is a zwitterionic state to the short axis. The excited (1)Ag state gradually switches from a double-excitation state to another zwitterionic state to the short axis, but always keeps its covalent nature to the long axis. An energy crossing between the (1)B2u and excited (1)Ag states happens between hexacene and heptacene. Further energetic consideration suggests that higher acenes are likely to undergo singlet fission with a low photovoltaic efficiency; however, the efficiency might be improved if a singlet fission into multiple triplets could be achieved.

Approximate singly excited states from a two-component Hartree-Fock reference.

For many molecules, relaxing the spin symmetry constraint on the wave function results in the lowest energy mean-field solution. The two-component Hartree-Fock (2cHF) method relaxes all spin symmetry constraints, and the wave function is no longer an eigenfunction of the total spin, spin projection, or time-reversal symmetry operators. For ground state energies, 2cHF is a superior mean-field method for describing spin-frustrated molecules. For excited states, the utility of 2cHF is uncertain. Here, we implement the 2cHF extensions of two single-reference excited state methods, the two-component configuration interaction singles and time-dependent Hartree-Fock. We compare the results to the analogous methods based off of the unrestricted Hartree-Fock approximation, as well as the full configuration interaction for three small molecules with distinct 2cHF solutions, and discuss the nature of the 2cHF excited state solutions.

Singlet-triplet energy gaps for diradicals from particle-particle random phase approximation.

The particle-particle random phase approximation (pp-RPA) for calculating excitation energies has been applied to diradical systems. With pp-RPA, the two nonbonding electrons are treated in a subspace configuration interaction fashion while the remaining part is described by density functional theory (DFT). The vertical or adiabatic singlet-triplet energy gaps for a variety of categories of diradicals, including diatomic diradicals, carbene-like diradicals, disjoint diradicals, four-π-electron diradicals, and benzynes are calculated. Except for some excitations in four-π-electron diradicals, where four-electron correlation may play an important role, the singlet-triplet gaps are generally well predicted by pp-RPA. With a relatively low O(r(4)) scaling, the pp-RPA with DFT references outperforms spin-flip configuration interaction singles. It is similar to or better than the (variational) fractional-spin method. For small diradicals such as diatomic and carbene-like ones, the error of pp-RPA is slightly larger than noncollinear spin-flip time-dependent density functional theory (NC-SF-TDDFT) with LDA or PBE functional. However, for disjoint diradicals and benzynes, the pp-RPA performs much better and is comparable to NC-SF-TDDFT with long-range corrected ωPBEh functional and spin-flip configuration interaction singles with perturbative doubles (SF-CIS(D)). In particular, with a correct asymptotic behavior and being almost free from static correlation error, the pp-RPA with DFT references can well describe the challenging ground state and charge transfer excitations of disjoint diradicals in which almost all other DFT-based methods fail. Therefore, the pp-RPA could be a promising theoretical method for general diradical problems.

A systematic approach to vertically excited states of ethylene using configuration interaction and coupled cluster techniques.

A systematic sequence of configuration interaction and coupled cluster calculations were used to describe selected low-lying singlet and triplet vertically excited states of ethylene with the goal of approaching the all electron, full configuration interaction/complete basis set limit. Included among these is the notoriously difficult, mixed valence/Rydberg (1)B(1u) V state. Techniques included complete active space and iterative natural orbital configuration interaction with large reference spaces which led to variational spaces of 1.8 × 10(9) parameters. Care was taken to avoid unintentionally biasing the results due to the widely recognized sensitivity of the V state to the details of the calculation. The lowest vertical and adiabatic ionization potentials to the (2)B(3u) and (2)B3 states were also determined. In addition, the heat of formation of twisted ethylene (3)A1 was obtained from large basis set coupled cluster theory calculations including corrections for core/valence, scalar relativistic and higher order correlation recovery.

Canonical form of the Hartree-Fock orbitals in open-shell systems.

This work compares different approaches to deriving Hartree-Fock (HF) orbitals and orbital energies for open-shell systems. We compare the basic HF equations underlying both the classic open-shell HF methods, which are the restricted open-shell HF (ROHF) and unrestricted HF (UHF) methods, and a number of the novel (amended) versions of these methods. The main attention is paid to a treatment of the validity of Brillouin's and Koopmans' theorems in the amended versions. We show that these two theorems are fully obeyed only in the special (canonical) form of the ROHF method developed by Plakhutin et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 125, 204110 (2006)] and by Davidson and Plakhutin [J. Chem. Phys. 132, 184110 (2010)], while each of the amended UHF methods suffers from some deficiencies inherent to original UHF and ROHF methods. To compare the HF orbitals derived by different methods in two different forms - DODS (different orbitals for different spins) and SODS (the same orbitals for different spins), we develop the new ROHF-DODS method which combines the use of DODS underlying amended UHF methods and the main advantage of the canonical ROHF method which is a fulfillment of the rigorous Koopmans' conditions. The main result of this work is that the orbitals and orbital energies derived with the new ROHF-DODS method appear identical to those derived with the canonical ROHF method based on the use of SODS. A discussion is presented of some related problems arising in open-shell HF methods such as a violation of the Aufbau principle.

Spin-state splittings, highest-occupied-molecular-orbital and lowest-unoccupied-molecular-orbital energies, and chemical hardness.

It is known that the exact density functional must give ground-state energies that are piecewise linear as a function of electron number. In this work we prove that this is also true for the lowest-energy excited states of different spin or spatial symmetry. This has three important consequences for chemical applications: the ground state of a molecule must correspond to the state with the maximum highest-occupied-molecular-orbital energy, minimum lowest-unoccupied-molecular-orbital energy, and maximum chemical hardness. The beryllium, carbon, and vanadium atoms, as well as the CH(2) and C(3)H(3) molecules are considered as illustrative examples. Our result also directly and rigorously connects the ionization potential and electron affinity to the stability of spin states.

Koopmans' theorem in the restricted open-shell Hartree-Fock method. 1. A variational approach.

A general formulation of Koopmans' theorem is derived for high-spin half-filled open shells in the restricted open-shell Hartree-Fock (ROHF) method based on a variational treatment of both the initial (nonionized) open-shell system under study, e.g., X, and the corresponding high-spin ions Xk+, Xm+, and Xv- having a hole or an extra electron in the closed, open, and virtual shell, respectively. The ions are treated within a FCI-RAS (full CI in the restricted active space) method with a use of arbitrary ROHF orbitals optimal for the initial system. We show that the desired canonical ROHF orbitals and orbital energies satisfying Koopmans' theorem, first defined within the canonical ROHF treatment [Plakhutin; et al. J. Chem. Phys. 2006, 125, 204110], generally appear as the natural CI orbitals and the eigenvalues of CI matrices for the respective ions X+/-. A comparison is performed between the results derived with the present CI approach and the canonical ROHF method for the specific case where the canonical orbital energies satisfying Koopmans' theorem do not satisfy the Aufbau principle.

Theoretical and spectroscopic investigations of the bonding and reactivity of (RO)3M[triple bond]N molecules, where M = Cr, Mo, and W.

The electronic structures of the molecules ((t)BuO)(3)M[triple bond]N (M = Cr, Mo, W) have been investigated with gas phase photoelectron spectroscopy and density functional calculations. It is found that the alkoxide orbitals mix strongly with the M[triple bond]N triple bond orbitals and contribute substantially to the valence electronic structure. The first ionization of ((t)BuO)(3)Cr[triple bond]N is from an orbital of a(2)(C(3v)) symmetry that is oxygen based and contains no metal or nitrogen character by symmetry. In contrast, the first ionizations of the molybdenum and tungsten analogues are from orbitals of a(1) and e symmetry that derive from the highest occupied M[triple bond]N sigma and pi orbitals mixed with the appropriate symmetry combinations of the oxygen p orbitals. In this a(1) orbital, the oxygen p orbitals mix with the highest occupied M[triple bond]N orbital of sigma symmetry. This mixing reduces the metal character, consequently reducing the metal-nitrogen overlap interaction in this orbital. From computational modeling, the polarity of the M[triple bond]N bond increases down the group such that W[triple bond]N has the highest charge separation. In addition to investigation of the effects of the metals, the electronic influences of substitution at the alkoxide ligands have been examined for the molecules (RO)(3)Mo[triple bond]N (R = C(CH(3))(2)H, C(CH(3))(3), and C(CH(3))(2)CF(3)). The introduction of CF(3) groups stabilizes the molecular orbital energies and increases the measured ionization energies, but does not alter the overall electronic structure. The bonding characteristics of the ((t)BuO)(3)M[triple bond]N series are compared with those of organic nitriles.

Size extensivity of the direct optimized effective potential method.

We investigate the size extensivity of the direct optimized effective potential procedure of Yang and Wu [Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 143002 (2002)]. The choice of reference potential within the finite basis construction of the local Kohn-Sham potential can lead to a method that is not size extensive. Such a situation is encountered when one employs the Fermi-Amaldi potential, which is often used to enforce the correct asymptotic behavior of the exact exchange-correlation potential. The size extensivity error with the Fermi-Amaldi reference potential is shown to behave linearly with the number of electrons in the limit of an infinite number of well separated monomers. In practice, the error tends to be rather small and rapidly approaches the limiting linear behavior. Moreover, with a flexible enough potential basis set, the error can be decreased significantly. We also consider one possible reference potential, constructed from the van Leeuwen-Baerends potential, which provides a size extensive implementation while also enforcing the correct asymptotic behavior.

Self-consistent effective local potentials.

An effective local potential (ELP) is a multiplicative operator whose deviation from a given nonlocal potential has the smallest variance evaluated with a prescribed single-determinant wave function. ELPs are useful in density functional theory as alternatives to optimized effective potentials (OEPs) because they do not require special treatment in finite basis set calculations as OEPs do. We generalize the idea of variance-minimizing potentials by introducing the concept of a self-consistent ELP (SCELP), a local potential whose deviation from its nonlocal counterpart has the smallest variance in terms of its own Kohn-Sham orbitals. A semi-analytical method for computing SCELPs is presented. The OEP, ELP, and SCELP techniques are applied to the exact-exchange-only Kohn-Sham problem and are found to produce similar results for many-electron atoms.

Large ground-state entropy changes for hydrogen atom transfer reactions of iron complexes.

Reported herein are the hydrogen atom transfer (HAT) reactions of two closely related dicationic iron tris(alpha-diimine) complexes. FeII(H2bip) (iron(II) tris[2,2'-bi-1,4,5,6-tetrahydropyrimidine]diperchlorate) and FeII(H2bim) (iron(II) tris[2,2'-bi-2-imidazoline]diperchlorate) both transfer H* to TEMPO (2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-1-piperidinoxyl) to yield the hydroxylamine, TEMPO-H, and the respective deprotonated iron(III) species, FeIII(Hbip) or FeIII(Hbim). The ground-state thermodynamic parameters in MeCN were determined for both systems using both static and kinetic measurements. For FeII(H2bip) + TEMPO, DeltaG degrees = -0.3 +/- 0.2 kcal mol-1, DeltaH degrees = -9.4 +/- 0.6 kcal mol-1, and DeltaS degrees = -30 +/- 2 cal mol-1 K-1. For FeII(H2bim) + TEMPO, DeltaG degrees = 5.0 +/- 0.2 kcal mol-1, DeltaH degrees = -4.1 +/- 0.9 kcal mol-1, and DeltaS degrees = -30 +/- 3 cal mol-1 K-1. The large entropy changes for these reactions, |TDeltaS degrees | = 9 kcal mol-1 at 298 K, are exceptions to the traditional assumption that DeltaS degrees approximately 0 for simple HAT reactions. Various studies indicate that hydrogen bonding, solvent effects, ion pairing, and iron spin equilibria do not make major contributions to the observed DeltaS degrees HAT. Instead, this effect arises primarily from changes in vibrational entropy upon oxidation of the iron center. Measurement of the electron-transfer half-reaction entropy, |DeltaS degrees Fe(H2bim)/ET| = 29 +/- 3 cal mol-1 K-1, is consistent with a vibrational origin. This conclusion is supported by UHF/6-31G* calculations on the simplified reaction [FeII(H2N=CHCH=NH2)2(H2bim)]2+...ONH2 left arrow over right arrow [FeII(H2N=CHCH=NH2)2(Hbim)]2+...HONH2. The discovery that DeltaS degrees HAT can deviate significantly from zero has important implications on the study of HAT and proton-coupled electron-transfer (PCET) reactions. For instance, these results indicate that free energies, rather than enthalpies, should be used to estimate the driving force for HAT when transition-metal centers are involved.

Analysis of wave functions for open-shell molecules.

During the past decade we have looked at several ways to track the distribution of unpaired electrons during chemical reactions and in different spin states. These methods were inspired by our previous work on singlet di-radicals where the spin density is zero yet there are clearly singly occupied orbitals. More recently we have been concerned with analysis of wave functions for single molecule magnets. This review discusses the mathematical framework by which open-shell systems can be described, in addition to methods that extract the effectively unpaired electron density, the spin state of atoms in a molecule, and other useful properties from a molecular wave function. Some of the difficulties associated with using broken spin Slater determinants to evaluate the exchange coupling parameters in the Heisenberg Hamiltonian are also mentioned.

The effective local potential method: implementation for molecules and relation to approximate optimized effective potential techniques.

We have recently formulated a new approach, named the effective local potential (ELP) method, for calculating local exchange-correlation potentials for orbital-dependent functionals based on minimizing the variance of the difference between a given nonlocal potential and its desired local counterpart [V. N. Staroverov et al., J. Chem. Phys. 125, 081104 (2006)]. Here we show that under a mildly simplifying assumption of frozen molecular orbitals, the equation defining the ELP has a unique analytic solution which is identical with the expression arising in the localized Hartree-Fock (LHF) and common energy denominator approximations (CEDA) to the optimized effective potential. The ELP procedure differs from the CEDA and LHF in that it yields the target potential as an expansion in auxiliary basis functions. We report extensive calculations of atomic and molecular properties using the frozen-orbital ELP method and its iterative generalization to prove that ELP results agree with the corresponding LHF and CEDA values, as they should. Finally, we make the case for extending the iterative frozen-orbital ELP method to full orbital relaxation.

Effective local potentials for orbital-dependent density functionals.

Practicality of the Kohn-Sham density functional scheme for orbital-dependent functionals hinges on the availability of an efficient procedure for constructing local exchange-correlation potentials in finite basis sets. We have shown recently that the optimized effective potential (OEP) method, commonly used for this purpose, is not free from difficulties. Here we propose a robust alternative to OEPs, termed effective local potentials (ELPs), based on minimizing the variance of the difference between a given nonlocal potential and its desired local counterpart. The ELP method is applied to the exact-exchange-only problem and shown to be promising for overcoming troubles with OEPs.